CSotD: Under the spreading security blanket
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Ah, brave new world that has such comics in it!
Today's Arlo & Janis is potentially confusing because neither character is regularly the fall guy. Sometimes Arlo worries too much about things that shouldn't bother him and sometimes Janis is innocently clueless about technology. In this case, however, I don't see how Jimmy Johnson can be taking Janis's side.
When I was a kid in the 1950s, I remember a couple who came to our school for an assembly about the Menace of Communism. It was just what you've heard about that decade's red scare. They told us that, if we let down our guard, we'd all end up having to carry a national ID card, we'd have our travel restricted, the government would tap our phones and we'd all be encouraged to inform on each other.
But, of course, they were assuming a scenario in which Russian soldiers stood on the street corners making sure a defeated nation complied. They didn't present us with a vision of a compliant nation in which nobody missed their freedoms or even realized they were gone.
Michael Moore's "Capitalism: A Love Story" was on cable last night and, as with a lot of his stuff, it did a nice job of setting up the situation and then went into wacky paranoid idiocy on the topic of how it all happened and what we ought to do about it. Like the Birchers, Moore envisions a system in which Evil People plot to dominate The Good.
If only the world were that simple.
Lenin is said to have remarked that, if you want to hang a capitalist, he will sell you the rope, and we've sold ourselves miles of rope in the last 20 years, in the name of safety. Some of it was directly linked to terrorism and 9/11. But a lot of it has been linked to TV ratings and personal paranoia. And some of it, like the tracking that is the topic of today's A&J (Remember today's A&J? This is a blog posting about today's A&J.) is simply based on the fact that we are no longer creeped out by being watched.
Certainly, nobody under 30 should be particularly alarmed. We've systematically taught them not to be.
For the first several years I was doing educational work in the schools, life was pretty simple. You'd go to a school, find a parking space, walk to the nearest door and go inside. Then Columbine came, and they went on lockdown, with only one entrance open and someone sitting inside to check out all visitors. Now, it does make sense to not let random people wander through the schools, but that's the problem: It all makes sense.
Things have relaxed somewhat, but schools are still a high security area in which kids learn to sacrifice freedom in exchange for security.
And it's not just about Columbine. They also are subject to searches for drugs and other contraband, including having the police come in with dogs for locker searches. When you are subject to this kind of intrusive scrutiny at an airport, there is the mitigating factor that you have chosen to fly and are there voluntarily, but kids are legally compelled to be in school. And, once in school, they lose most of their Bill of Rights protections.
Moreover, we've elevated Stranger Danger well beyond its actual status as a risk for kids. Going back to the 1950s again, we were all told not to talk to strangers and we were warned about those who might offer us candy. We scared the bejabbers out of each other talking about Bobby Greenlease, the young victim of a 1953 kidnapping/murder that was gruesome enough before we began to elaborate on it.
But the growth of Stranger Danger as a ratings hook and as a topic for self-anointed security experts to give paid talks about became also a chance to sell kits to local service organizations and police departments so they could fingerprint children to keep them safe. Nobody has ever explained how this would keep a child safe, since the only practical use would be to identify a corpse, but parents and children dutifully line up to have the little ones put into the system, and now there are also DNA swabbings you can add.
This does nothing to protect children, since you can always test a corpse for DNA anyway, and nobody is going to routinely fingerprint or DNA test a live child, right? I mean, we aren't quite there yet.
But it does teach children that giving up personal information is something we cheerfully and routinely do in the name of security and safety. It also teaches them that the world is a very dangerous place and we all need protection from the bad people who are everywhere.
(My suggestion about the abduction issue is to have Olin Mills set up at these events and take family group shots. People could then purchase photo packages if they wanted, but, in any case, it would provide a recent picture of the child in case he or she were abducted, and, in the great majority of cases, it would also provide a recent picture of the abductor. Nobody wants to hear my suggestions.)
I often think about that couple who came to my school all those years ago. They warned that, if we didn't fight the commies, we'd end up losing all our freedoms. But, since this is a blog about comics, the take away quote is, of course, "We have met the enemy and he is us."
As for tracking and SmartPhones, I don't like being tracked but have surrendered to the supermarkets in order to save money and earn a discount on gas. I don't mind if they know I bought bananas. But the SmartPhone issue isn't part of my world because the service is unnecessary and just one more monthly bill to face. I never go anywhere except the dog park and a regular cell phone is all the leash I need there.
There was, however, a piece on Stranger Danger going around the Internet recently in which it was noted that, if you use your SmartPhone to take a picture of your kid and then post it online, somebody who wants, for instance, to fly from Kansas City to Seattle to molest a child can find out where your kid is. Or was. And might be again.
This will not keep me up late, since I think most molestors can do just fine at a family reunion and the rare stranger-type can just drive down to the local park. But I'm sure the TV station that did the linked story on their local news is thrilled with all the hits and will do another Stranger Danger story soon.
Still, it's not the weight of any one piece that breaks the camel's back, and we've added quite a load, straw by straw by straw.
And, whether it happens by some cunning plot or simply by an incremental buildup of stupidity, fear and greed, where you end up is where you are.
One of this blog's faithful readers, hildigunnur, commented on Tuesday's entry about the death of bin Laden, "Not a comic strip but a fb status I saw – 'Emmanuel Goldstein's dead'. Pretty to-the-point…"
Indeed. We're going to miss that guy. America needs enemies, else what use is all our safety and security?
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